A wolf hunting season in three areas of the Upper Peninsula will not be affected by a statewide vote next year. / U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

The Board of State Canvassers certified more than 250,000 petition signatures Wednesday that sought to ban the hunt. But the law the hunt opponents were seeking to repeal was passed last year and is now superseded by a new law passed this year.

So even though the wolf hunt proposal will be on the November 2014 ballot, it’s merely a symbolic gesture.

The new law, which took effect May 8, allows the state Natural Resources Commission, in addition to the Legislature, to designate game species in the state and establish hunting seasons for those species.

On May 9, the NRC, with its new powers in place because of the new law, established a Nov. 15 to Dec. 31 hunting season for 43 gray wolves in three sections of the western Upper Peninsula where the animals have been posing threats to livestock and pets.

The commission still has to vote in June to designate the gray wolf — and all the other species already hunted in Michigan, like deer and grouse — as game species, said Russ Mason, wildlife chief for the Department of Natural Resources.

In July, the NRC will reaffirm their vote on establishing the hunting season for the wolves, Mason said.

“We won’t be taking testimony; it’s just an administrative type of thing,” he said.

The Keep Michigan Wolves Protected group, which spearheaded the petition drive to ban the hunt, is considering all of its options to stop the hunt, including the possibility of another petition drive to get the new law repealed.